"Conviction Culture" and "Sororal Correction" in Protestant and Catholic Women's Ministry Culture
An inescapable fixture of Protestant women’s ministry is church-body-sponsored external spiritual advice. The congregation pays to bring Bonnie Bible, Susane Savior, or Clara Consince into the auditorium or gathering hall to give a talk on some issue of lifestyle-related controversy. It could be relationships, marriage, children, modesty, work, or leadership, but the topics float around these areas. The stated goal of these talks is to help women with their husbands, their troubled daughter, their walk with God, purity within marriage, or a difficult coworker, but the actual purpose of these talks is far different. Their emotional purpose is to “convict” women.
2. A certain kind of Protestant woman froths at the mouth to be told what to do, or what not to do. They call this “being convicted”. Bikinis, for example, are an issue of controversy in Christian circles: are they little more than underwear? Is it context-dependent? How much midriff and buttcheek is too much? There is no shortage of speakers with all kinds of opinions on the Bikini Question. The speaker could tell these women that bikinis are infernal inventions from the hands of literally Satan, and they’d cheer and chant “Amen!” The speaker could say all women ought to wear at least a skirted suit and rashguard. “Hallelujah,” they’d say again. They would still affirm this even if they don’t fully agree with it or ever plan to wear anything besides a bikini. Furthermore, after these talks, the women in attendance will get together and impose (more like suggest) even stricter standards on themselves. You’d hear, over bad parish hall coffee, “I wear those high-cut bottoms, but I don't even think that’s acceptable. I’ll fix to wear a little something over top of that.” The woman who offers this restriction probably means to follow through, but who knows if all the women who affirm her ever will.
3. There is a certain kind of Catholic woman who is the exact opposite. She will learn theology, seek out books and priests and knowledge from wherever she can get it, pray and discern, only so she can get out of Roman Catholic obligations. I once had a conversation with a Catholic woman who insisted that it didn’t break her eucharistic fast for her to have a latte 15 minutes before Mass, so long as the milk used was skim, “because coffee is basically water and skim milk is basically water, and because it doesn’t have any fat, it’s fine.” I made an attempt at arguing with her, but I didn’t get very far. She rattled off a series of CCC numbers and something or other she heard from a priest. What I eventually said was, “Oh, uh-huh, totally…” but what I should’ve said was, “This is Talmudic and I rebuke it!” Collecting religious knowledge to skirt obligations is sacrilege in the highest order.
4. These are the women with whom I spend most of my time– they are otherwise very kind and pious women. I’m concerned about this because I love them, I work with them, I pray with them, and I live with them, and it disturbs me that this attitude is so common.
5. This is not something I am disconnected from or something that doesn’t involve me. I got my theology degree in Catholic theology at a Catholic university. I am involved with Catholic culture, as is the majority of the world; It’s a public institution that warrants public critique.
6. Because Catholic women are very unlikely to criticize other Catholic women on anything, it’s mostly non-Catholic women, both in person and online, who try to call Catholic women to something higher. This is yet another thing that allows this kind of woman to shut her ears to pious suggestions; it's easy to dismiss the idea that you actually shouldn’t eat or drink anything an hour before Mass, that you should dress modestly, or read the Bible, when a non-Catholic woman is giving the suggestion. They will say, “Who are you to say? You’re not even Catholic!” You’d’ve thought with all the philosophy they read to get out of things, they’d discover the basic fact that what is true is true, regardless of who says it. I say that as if it isn’t clear that these women wouldn’t take criticism any better if it came from a fellow Catholic woman. Citations from this priest or that saint, this council or the next, the “you’re not catholic” card, and whatever else, are not reasons; they’re excuses.
7. One unintentional, social result of the Roman Catholic Church’s promulgation of the Universal Call to Holiness is that “holiness” has been interpreted as “ecstatic sainthood”. There is a belief that all people are not called to holiness in the sense of virtue, repentance, and love, but extraordinary feats of monasticism and evangelization. This is self-evidently stupid. Most people are not called to starve themselves all Holy Week or travel to Sudan and be martyred. But this is how many members of the Catholic laity have interpreted their call to holiness. Therefore, when they end up unable to eat plain oatmeal all of Lent or wear pebbles in their shoes for the sake of mortification, these Catholic women then believe that they, in the mediocrity we all share, have reached the ceiling of holiness. Their devotion must be equally as great as those saints who saw the Uncreated Light. There is nowhere better to go, there is nothing more pious to do, there is nothing more loving, more sanctified, or pure than what they’re already doing right now. If anything, they struggle with scrupulosity, and they should really be doing less.
8. No person can maintain either their spiritual well-being or their personal happiness in this state of exceptional, delusional pride. You’d have to leave yourself in an off-grid, one-room cabin to be able to sustain the belief that there is not more you could be doing spiritually, that you’re the holiest person on Earth. Everywhere you look, there is someone who is a better ascetic than you, a better spouse than you, a better Christian than you.
9. This is why a great portion of Catholic Women’s Ministry is about giving women skills to soothe this cognitive dissonance. Stories of Sainthood focus on obscure ‘Blesseds’ who were married, unmartyred, and non-evangelistic. This, in itself, isn’t bad (there are plenty of holy people who lead simple lives), but these people are given preference to the exclusion and even defamation of other saints with grander stories of mysticism, martyrdom, or self-mortification. The Apostle Paul is a subject of particular and great ire among these women because he is constantly demanding things of his congregations. Not only is he demanding, but he is constantly giving excuses for those who fall short of the demands. This should be comforting, but it is very painful to admit we fall short and are in need of Grace. It is a pain that these women build their whole intellect around resisting.
10. As an aside, this problem is mirrored in Protestant and Catholic men. You can’t tell a Protestant man diddly-squat, especially as a woman or as any Christian outside of their denomination. Be he conservative or liberal, he, like his kind of Catholic woman, has built his spiritual life around the shrine of getting out of crap. Say he should fast, say he should read scripture, say he should go to church, say he should stop fornicating, and you’ll get a line of sola-inspired excuses: “I don’t gotta do that, I am saved by faith, not by works!” as if John Calvin would say that joker is getting past the pearly gates. It isn’t faith; it’s an excuse.
11. Catholic men, on the other hand, treat “getting convicted” (what they refer to generally as “self-mortification” or in more Thomistic terms) like a social activity. In the same way Protestant women froth, a certain kind of Catholic man fetishizes. They’re always looking to be told they’re not doing enough, that they could fast more, that they shouldn’t use contemporary banks, and that they should whip themselves with a scourge. I could dress up like a man and start a podcast about cutting off one of your testicles for the sake of the Kingdom, and there’d be a movement of tradcaths behind it, despite the fact that this is a magisterially condemned practice. Like Protestant women, I’d guess very few tradcath men are actually doing the things they say are holy– in many cases, I’m sure it’s better that way. The point is that they aspire to great feats of piety.
12. Catholic women waste their intellects and spirits on what is essentially an entire cultural and parochial infrastructure of cope. This is not healthy, and it is not Biblical. You are always called higher, you always need to do better, because you will always fail. Paul says in Romans 3: 10-12, quoting Psalm 53, “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside.” Paul is not talking to you, reader, about your enemies– abortionists, the fornicators, this modern scourge of a world. No. He is talking about you, and he is talking about me. It is a cultural stereotype that “Catholic Guilt” and “scrupulosity” are pervasive issues in Roman Catholicism, but in my experience, Catholics do not have nearly enough guilt. They need profane guilt.
13. Profane guilt is not the same as moral guilt. Moral guilt is the guilt you feel for something wrong you’ve done– if you insult a relative, if you steal something, or if you fornicate, etc., you feel moral guilt because God is calling you to repent. Profane guilt, on the other hand, is guilt for the crime of being: not being holy, not being pure, not being God. Essentially, it is the shame of nakedness. There isn’t really anything wrong with nakedness. It's not an injustice. You’re born naked, you bathe naked, and so on, but it’s shameful and humiliating to be naked if you’re in the company of clothed people. In a similar way, before God and before Holiness, and holy people in general, we feel the same guilt. It’s important, as Christians, that we befriend this guilt and use it as God intended. Profane guilt lives in us so that we don’t get complacent in our spiritual lives.
14. It is exactly as disordered, if not more so, to attempt to hide from the profane guilt of lackluster prayer as it would be to hide from the moral guilt of cheating on your spouse. Adulterers give excuses for their crimes against Love and Fidelity: He was mean to me, She didn’t want to have sex with me, He let himself go, so on and so forth, till they’re blue in the face. Catholic Women’s Ministry would not build itself around coddling these excuses. Rightly, it would seek to have adulterers face their guilt and repent. Even if a cheater goes on cheating, it would be better that they feel guilty because at least then they’d be in some kind of alignment with reality. Likewise, an aspiration to and admiration of greater piety, even if it is never achieved, is better than languishing in and exalting whatever spirituality we’re currently settled with.
15. So, what’s the solution to this? It’s simple, and it doesn’t involve a seat on the parish council, parochial money, or a degree in ministry. Catholic women with good heads on your shoulders, you are all your church needs. There are plenty of you, and I know you see these problems, because you, too, are my friends, my coworkers, and my classmates. I hear you complain about it. We complain together. All that’s keeping you from offering sororal correction is social pressure. Because there is such a fixation, both in "The Culture" and within Christianity, on 'uplifting women', 'supporting women', etc., you can feel like you’re just tearing other women down, even when you offer a suggestion into the ether, to no one in particular. But it isn’t “negative” or “judgmental” to know that your sisters in Christ are capable of and called to much more than they’re being given. To Love someone is to will their Good. It is to will their purification and their piety.
16. Show them that it isn't a sad and awful life to acknowledge your failures, both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed, committed in knowledge or in ignorance. It doesn't make you reprobate to be a lousy prayer, or a lazy faster, or a distractible parishioner. It doesn't make you exceptionally unholy to fall short of what the Church teaches, your priest recommends, or cannons suggest. You know, as the Church knows, that it just makes you what you are-- fallen, human, and in need of a savior. Show them the joy you've shown me, that the Savior has come, has paid all our debts, and only cares that we realize there is a debt to begin with.
